A New York tattoo start-up seeking to expand into Charleston has sued South Carolina health and law-enforcement leaders, arguing that two long-standing restrictions on tattooing violate the First Amendment by treating ink on skin as second-class speech.
In a complaint filed Friday in federal court in Charleston, Tiny Zaps Co. — a company founded in 2024 by entrepreneur Sam Kelly and tattoo artist Bruno Levy — challenged a state rule that bars licensing tattoo facilities within 1,000 feet of a church, school or playground. The company says the rule makes it effectively impossible to open in Charleston’s historic core, a neighborhood dense with churches and schools and marketed, in local lore, as “the Holy City.”
The lawsuit also takes aim at a criminal statute that makes it a misdemeanor for tattoo artists to tattoo “any part of the head, face, or neck” of another person — a ban that can carry penalties of up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine…